Four years before it was canceled, the Guitar Hero series was the top franchise in the game industry.

Coming up fast in the number two slot is last year's smash hit Call of Duty: Black Ops. Already the number one best seller by units in US history, with 13.7 million units sold, the Treyarch-developed title has made $787.4 million to date. That's just $43.5 million less than Guitar Hero III, the figure for which was inflated by sales of guitar-controller bundles.

Also boosted by bundling was the number three game, Nintendo's Wii Fit, which came with the Wii Balance Board. Fourth place was a stand-alone game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, while fifth belonged to Rock Band, which was available a la carte or bundled with a drum set, microphone, and guitar. The games made $713.6 million and $670.7 million, respectively.

Rounding out the top 10 were Wii Play (sixth), Guitar Hero World Tour (seventh), Wii Fit Plus (eighth), Mario Kart Wii (ninth), and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (10th). NPD did not release sales totals for the bottom half of the top 10 chart.

I died a little inside when I saw 3 of those games in the top 10 have call of duty on the front.
Its a series that really has to die now. Its the exact same crap since cod4. COD4 was innovation. The rest is nothing but some balance and graphic updates.

grasu@
I think the main reason Activision is hated is because of their business plan. Their business plan usually makes them destroy anything they touch. They also seem to mess with other publishers, developers and workers at times too.

Good job to anything that isn't Activision published and Wii play. I found Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus really good games and they are nowhere near shovelware quality haters. They both have a 7 and 7.5 on GS.

It's called milking and that's exactly what Activi$ion does. Make easy money until the product as become stale. Glad I don't fall for their trap and their crappy games.
Activi$ion is officially the devil of the gaming industry. All they care about is money and not gamers such greedy bastards.

What do all these games have in common? 1. Easy to get in to
2. Hard to master
3. Sense of reward and achievable goals (COD-Ranking up/Guitar Hero increasing difficulty and getting higher scores / stars) Wii Fit (never played it but i'm sure it has a sense of reward)
Recipe for success but you will have just as many people that hate you as love you.

@treisgar
You're right, I was confusing the two. Wii Play was the one they sold the extra controller, Wii Sports came with the Wii.
I always get those two confused, mostly because I never played either (even the pack-in one got side-stepped because we had Wii Sports Resort).

You can't see, but my face has disillusioned written all over it looking at that list *shakes head*
None of the rhythm games deserve to be on there, I don't need to say anything more about CoD.... that just leaves Mario Kart I suppose, because Wii Play was NOT A GAME. People only bought it for the knock down priced controller, the game that came with it was an afterthought.

"That's just $43.5 million less than Guitar Hero III, the figure for which was inflated by sales of guitar-controller bundles." Because Black Ops didn't have an $80 and a $150 dollar bundle?
What the crap is this gamespot, you guys are seriously just throwing out anything you think of without thinking or doing research.
Both games are crap. Cod4 and Guitar hero 2 deserve those sales if anything.

CONTINUED
In fact, if you look at many companies that were in Activision's place last generation (EA, Take2) and made ****loads of money recycling franchises you'd see that today thanks to the franchises that they spawn on a yearly basis and market to casual consumers we get games such as Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space, Borderlands, etc. I don't see why this trend won't continue in the future.

Very good job by Activision. Nitendo did well too. However, by reading some of the comments against Activision around here I have to wonder if some of you people don't own stock at competing companies. What's wrong with Activison making money out of gaming? Isn't that what a business is supposed to do? Didn't Midway, Interplay and others go bankrupt because they didn't make money? If Atari would have went out of business 3-4 years ago when they were on the edge of insolvency would that have spared gamers from lousy anime tie-in games? Obviously companies need to make money to surivive and if Activision isn't making moeny out of miliking franchises, you can bet someone else will. Nitendo, EA, Sony, Microsoft, THQ, Take2, and everyone else is waiting just around the corner.
I say that instead of *****ing endlessly about Activision perhaps we should look at this in a different light. To give you an example outside the industry, when Porsche released the Cayenne a few years back enthusiasts said that the sports car was obsolete, that the Cayenne (SUV) was marketed to the massess, that it's the end of Porsche, etc. Well it wasn't. And I doubt gaming is any different.

None of this is surprising. I'm more surprised that people enjoy playing duplo guitars. Hopefully more of the real guitar shows up soon - it's a shame to think of how many would-be musicians are falling through the cracks of enormous colored buttons.

COD map packs being 12 pounds probably has something to do with this..
This top 10 list depresses me.. In the back of my mind I could have guessed half of these.. which isn't a good thing.
Fair play to Nintendo though, they've done well this generation.

Geez, 5 of the top ten belong to Activision and 4 to Nintendo. 6 (maybe 7 if you include Mario Kart) revolved around needing or being packed with peripherals.
Is anyone else a little disturbed by these results?

wow, its actually quite sad that 3 COD games are on there, but there again its also quite sad that its also polluted with Rythem games and wii fit stuff.
Would any of these win a GOTY? considering they are the 10 top revenue games, you would think so, but nope

Some of you guys complain that Activision gets too much money from CoD, when you don't realise that Guitar Hero is also published by Activision. Not saying that they're bad (maybe excpet Lag Ops), just sayin